LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
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Gljnp. .enpnrm!|i:^a 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Under Which Flag ? 



The Great Question 
FOR Canada. 



Also a Brief Consideration of Imperial Federation, 

AND A View of Naturalization 

AS AN Immorality. 







By a Canadian in "the States." 



Tr(XY^\< >(N%J^-XNNrO 



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'"'^^^^/'^WAlHi!*^--''" ^ / 



1893. 



-^734 y 



Providence, R. I., U. S. A., 

The Rhode Island News Company, 

American Agents. 



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Copyright, 1S93, by F. Munro. 



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1.3 



f^A ^ ^ 



A copy of this book \\\\\ be sent to any address 
in the United States or Canada on receipt of 
25 cents. 

Address: P. O. Box y31, Providence, R. I. 



^ 



/ 



,i^<l 
^b'^ 



J. A. * R. A. Reid, Art PRI^T^:RS and Publishers, 
Dyer and Pine Streets. 



TjflE H^THODUCTIOl^. 




HY shall I, a Canadian, rise in 
the paHor of my hospitable 
American host and declare 
that my country's integrity 
must and ought to be pre- 
F served ? The proceeding is 
certainly unusual ; but Uncle 
Sam himself, or at least some 
of his more or less responsible 
lawmakers, with a joyous ab- 
sence of the conventional, long 
ago issued the invitations for an 
international symposium on the annexation 
question. To this, some of my expatriated 
countrymen have already eagerly contributed. 
I must, however, deny the right of men 
who have, through motives of expediency, or 
through any motives, gone out of the national 
life of their country ; who have solemnly 



THE INTRODUCTION. 



renounced all fidelity to it ; who teach by 
example that nationality is but an article of 
merchandise : I deny the right of these men 
to say what shall be done with the country 
they have deserted. The particular question 
of annexation, or of independence, or of 
imperial federation, is one which belongs to 
the Canadian who, wherever he maybe, main- 
tains the wholeness of a God-given character ; 
who ranks loyalty, whether it be to kin or 
country, as among the highest virtues ; who 
will not cringe, or yield what he conceives to 
be his native rights because of threats, no 
matter from whom ; and who has not seen in 
the barriers and artificialities of short-sighted 
governments a doom from God. 

Loving, as I do, my own country and its 
traditions and its splendid history, I feel that 
I shall be all the more a good resident — tem- 
porary it may be, or permanent — of the 
Republic, or of any other country in which I 
may be placed. I cannot conceive of a 
man being false to any person or thing 



THE INTRODUCTION. 



who is religiously true to himself and his 
conscience. 

This little work is not intended to alarm or 
irritate, but to conserve. The principles 
involved in annexation and in naturalization 
are believed to be essentially moral principles ; 
and a just settlement will not only tend to 
benefit the nationalities concerned, but human- 
ity in general. 

If we are to endure as peoples we must 
build the commercial on the moral, not the 
moral on the commercial. 

A Canadian in " the States." 



Boston, Mass., U. S.A.^ March, 1893. 



** The*flnne3^ation of Canada.'* 



TN the absence of that universal benevolence 
* which, we are sometimes told, is one day to 
rule at least the foreign policies of the nations, it 
may be safely assumed that an enlightened patriot- 
ism is of essential importance to a strong national 
life. The principle of friction is yet to accomplish 
much for the world, if, indeed, it shall ever be 
dispensed with. 

This being so, every evidence of well-timed 
nationalism on the part of an individual is, or 
should be, gratifying to his fellow-citizens ; and 
every lapse is, or should be, mortifying and 
abhorrent, not only to his own but to every other 
people. We will do well to remember that there 
is more danger to a country in an absence of the 
genuine patriotic instinct than there is in an undue 
development of it. 

Americans have built Bunker Hill Monument, 
and established forever the Fourth of July, and 
preserved old Faneuil Hall that the lessons of 
patriotism shall not be lost to them and to their 
children ; yet they welcome a citizen of another 
country wearing the uniform of the Queen's loyal 
Canadian militia who virtually comes to tell them 
7 



UNDER WHICH FLAG? 



— and in that Faneuil Hall, too — that there is no 
such thing as patriotism ; who comes to advocate the 
dismemberment of his magnificent empire and the 
absorption by an alien nation of an honest and con- 
tented, and, with a few odiously conspicuous ex- 
ceptions, a proud people !* 

Lieutenant Macdonald, now properly " ex, " by 
the heroic decision of the Canadian minister of 
militia, has been applauded by the American busi- 
ness man for exemplifying the doctrine of perfidy 
which the same business man's child is properly 
taught to regard with abhorrence ! What a de- 
moralizing object-lesson for the youth of this coun- 
try ! What a demoralizing object-lesson for the 
youth of any land ! 



The annexation question has, indeed, been early 
lugged up to the very portico of the House of 
Politics, though it would have been more seeming 
if the burden had lain on the shoulders of Canad- 
ians who were unhampered by office, the accept- 
ance of which office always implies loyalty to the 
government which created it. Hasty critics could 
not then so clearly make the deduction that the 
Canadian character is a perfidious one. 

♦Lieutenant Macdonald of Toronto, Canada, was the principal g^ucst 
and speaker at an annexation banquet given in Boston, Mass., in the 
fall of 1S93, by the Business Men's Association, 



THE GREAT qUESTION FOR CANADA. 9 

But looking into the faces of the young sons of 
Canada who in 1885 left stores and workshops and 
marched through wildernesses of snow, enduring 
unprecedented hardships, to face the bullets of a 
trained host of revolting half-breeds — and who put 
them down, too : looking into the faces of these I 
know I do not err in saying that the great question 
so recently precipitated is one which will be met 
honestly and fearlessly. It will be settled, too, as 
befits a people dowered with rare physical and 
mental vigor — by the arbitrament of the reason, 
digging down to the basis of morals and standing 
on the bed-rock which is character ! 



The Instinct of nationality Is, I conceive, due to 
a long process of nature, involving a community of 
interests and associations — victory and defeat, glory 
and even shame. Some one has well said that 
" all the virtues of past days work their health Into 
these." That community of Interests, or rather 
the social organization which resulted from it, was 
necessary in order that the end of happiness might 
be attained. How, then, can the Instinct, as some 
writers assert, be considered of doubtful purity .f* 
It appears to be simply the product of a great uni- 
versal law of our being. 

He, therefore, who advocates the wholesale ab- 
sorption of an alien people — of a people, even, 



lO UNDER WHICH FLAG? 

whose history had divided from his own so recently 
as a century or more ago — does not take account of 
normal human nature. He would introduce a 
poison into the body politic which, if it did not 
break out sooner or later in an eruption, would 
necessarily become the agency to enforce the pen- 
alty of immorality and ignorance by insidiously 
lowering the standard of the race. 

True, as a logical sequence, the people absorbed 
would become in the process of centuries endowed 
with a new and different instinct of nationality. 
But Is not the penalty of all this too great?* 
Would it pay, to use the popular phrase ? Would 
it not, after all, be better to have strong and moral 
allies than weak and immoral subjects? 



Canadians have nothing to gain by annexation 
to the United States, and it would seem that they 
have more than national honor to lose. If freedom 
of trade is desirable — and who will deny it? — both 
countries are now suffering- by the absence of 
that freedom. It is just as right (and certainly 
more profitable and business-like) to abolish or 
lower tariffs 7to'iv as to wait in the hope that a po- 
litical union might be consummated first. The 
code of governmental ethics which would maintain 

•The case of Ireland may, perhaps, be cited as an example and as a 
warning. 



THE GREAT QUESTION FOR CANADA. II 

a McKinley tariff wall in the hope of coercing an 
intelligent people into national extinction is not 
creditable to the nineteenth century, and certainly 
shows an astounding lack of perception.* No 
people ought to, and no self-respecting people wilf 
be forced or even led into the committing of an 
immorality, for a change of allegiance under nor- 
mal conditions would certainly be an immorality. 
The press of the Republic idly talks about Cana- 
dians counting on a " deficiency of patriotism " in 
Americans ; but are not Americans, by their own 
too bald statements, counting on an unheard-of 
deficiency of patriotism in Canadians? Does the 
leading paper of the metropolis of the New World 
mean to say that what is a virtue in its own people 
is a vice in aliens ? 



Erastus Wiman, the denationalized Canadian 
and renationalized American, standing on the hill- 
tops which skirt the border line and descrying — 
the tariff' wall being levelled — prosperity and hap- 
piness on either hand is a picture always attractive, 
if, in truth, a little worn. The economist, as he no 

* It appears that the Canadian Tories are counting on a deficiency of 
patriotism and foresight on the part of the Democratic Administra- 
tion at Washington. They mistakenly imagine that Mr. Cleveland 
will give them something for nothing, and thus enable them to prop 
the sinking cause of monarchy in Canada. Mr. Clarke does not hesi- 
tate to speak words of warning on this subject. It cannot be, he says, 
too strongly impressed upon Americans that the continental union 



12 UNDER WHICH FLAG? 

doubt likes to be called, never fails to secure a 
respectful hearing, which his reasoning would not 
always seem to justify. For instance, in a recent 
address in Woonsocket, R. I., he said — and this 
was Mr. Blaine's position, too — that, to have 
reciprocity, Canada must discriminate against goods 
from the mother country and in favor of those from 
the United States. Apart from the morality of such 
a proceeding is the question of economics. Why ^ 
should Canada bind herself to buy in the dearest 
markets? Why should she exclude the low-priced 
goods of free-trade England and admit the dearer 
products of this protected country? It would be 
asking too much of the government at Ottawa, which 
might be justified in requiring, as a part return for its 
sacrifice, that Canadians be allowed to share in the 
present favorable arrangements of the United States 
with the Latin-American countries. 

The true solution, it would seem, of the Canadian 
trade question, and of the English question, and of 
all like questions is not alone reciprocity, with the 

movement arises from economic and not from political causes. The 
originators of the movement want to enjoy all the commercial ad- 
vantages of Aineric:in citizenship. If the Democratic party chooses 
to make them partakers in those advantag:es by extendinjj the free list 
of the American tariff, most of those Canadians who are now annexion- 
ists will cease to be so. — [N, Y. Sun. 

It is for our Democratic rulers to decide whether we want Canada on 
our own terms or not. The maintenance of the agricultural sections 
of the McKinley tariff is the essential condition.— [Brooklyn (N. Y.) 



THE GREAT QUESTION FOR CANADA. 1 3 

limitations which it implies, but low tariff. It 
might then be to Canada's interest and advantage to 
buy many things of the United States ; and (but 
this is secondary) freedom of intercourse being 
established, Mr. Wiman and other unethical people 
could not so readily be led into giving such advice 
as has been noted, vs^hich if made under vs^hat w^ould 
be parallel conditions — w^ithin the circle of a family 
— vs^ouldbe regarded as injudicious and impertinent* 



Would annexation stop emigration from Canada 
and raise w^ages in that country, as has been asserted } 
It has not raised wages in the South, which is 
notoriously annexed ; nor has it stopped the migra- 
tion from Maine, nor from New Hampshire, nor 
from Vermont. In these New England States 
wages are no higher, and in some instances are 
lower than in Canada. The farmers of the Mari- 
time Provinces may complain, but they have not 
yet been forced to the extremity of abandoning their 
farms ! 

In the grand Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 
perhaps the banner state in many respects of the 
American Union, the number of abandoned farms 
reported in 1890 reached the large number of 1,461, 
the aggregate acreage of which was 126,509^.* A 
similar condition of things exists in other New 

♦Report of the Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor, March, 1890. 



14 UNDER WHICH FLAG? 

England states, and even in the West, where, 
according to the same authority, " more farms have 
been deserted by their owners than in the East." 

In the face of this testimony even Canadian 
annexationists — if there are really any such — whose 
only gods are Materiality and Profit — who inscribe 
the words "Selfishness" and "The Present" on 
their banner — must pause and put the mean query : 
Would annexation pay? 

But it will be well for all to remember that the 
material prosperity of a people is due chiefly to 
their own efforts and enterprise, aided more or less 
by nature. The system of government (always 
provided that it is representative) has practically 
nothing to do with their welfiire, although the 
administration of affairs, such as the imposition of 
tariffs, may have an influence. The farms of Massa- 
chusetts were not abandoned because the nation is 
a republic, nor would they be reoccupied if it should 
become a limited monarchy ; the restless young men 
of Canada do not leave their native land because it 
is an appendage of the British crown, nor would 
they any more stay at home if it were annexed to 
" the States." The movements to certain centres 
simply go on in obedience to natural laws, and the 
flow presupposes an ebb. 



Goldwin Smith, who has been harshly but not 



THE GREAT QUESTION FOR CANADA. 1 5 

without a large measure of truth styled *' The 
Renegade Englishman," (he is unique in this 
position, and almost alone, let it be said with 
pride, in the history of his race ! ) is just now mas- 
querading as an annexationist. He is the presi- 
dent of the so-called Continental Union Asso- 
ciation, and at a meeting in Toronto, Canada, on 
Jan. 28, 1893, said : 

Suppose there had been no schism of one race in 
America, and these provinces had always remained 
united to their own continent, would anybody but a luna- 
tic dream of tearing them away from it and attaching 
them politically and commercially to a nation on the 
other side of the Atlantic ? When it would be lunacy to 
divide is it not wisdom to unite ? 

But hold, Mr. Smith. It may be " brilliant " to 
set up a man of straw to suit the exigencies of 
your poor pugilistic logic, but it is not honest. 
You have ignored the actual, and drawn yonr 
deduction for annexation from the imaginary. Let 
us deal with facts. There was a '' schism," but 
Canada was not active in it. The American 
states, dissevered, gradually took on a new nation- 
ality. Canada retained its own. At this late day 
the question of their union is not simply one of 
wisdom but of practicability, as the consolidation of 
Austria and Germany is not a question of wisdom 
but of practicability. 



UNDER WHICH FLAG r 



The manifest part for wisdom to play is to 
recognize normal human nature^ a?id to secure 
unrestricted trade relations. 



But Mr. Smith has said many excellent things 
in the past. Some of them do not, however, har- 
monize well with his present political -union utter- 
ances. The following incidental criticism of one 
feature at least of the American constitution — under 
which he would now bring Canadians — is a case 
in point : 

In international courtesy Great Britain can hardly be 
said, in recent times, to have been wanting. It seems 
possible even that her civility may at times have appeared 
to Americans a little overstrained. It must be left to 
Americans to say whether there has been anything over- 
strained in the civility towards Great Britain of American 
legislatures and politicians, or even of American presi- 
dents, when elections were likely to turn on the Irish 
vote. The American constitution itself, by submitting 
treaties to discussion in the Senate after negotiation 
with the President, gives an opening for breaches of 
diplomatic courtesy, which, when Great Britain is con- 
cerned, are seldom allowed to go unimproved. To have, 
after framing a treaty with the President, to wait in the 
anteroom of the Senate, and then to be publicly dismissed 
with contumely, can never be agreeable to a government 
accustomed to the diplomatic etiquette and amenities of 
the old world. 



THE GREAT QUESTION FOR CANADA. l^ 

He further says (or did say) : 

British Canadians love a mother country which has 
never wilfully given them cause for complaint, and they 
take hostility to her as hostility to them. 

And yet the same Mr. Smith who displays (or 
did display !) this admirable spirit, and who is 
such a stickler for form, now asks Canadians to 
have no spirit and no sense of form ; asks them 
to desert the glorious flag which has shielded 
them, and which he admits they love, and, fore- 
going honor, merge themselves with aliens whom 
he himself severely criticises, and with whose gov- 
ernment he finds serious fault. 



In 1889 a lesolution looking to the annexation of 
Canada was introduced in the United States Sen- 
ate. This has been followed, in 1893, by a bill 
with the same object in view, introduced by Mr. 
Cummings in the House of Representatives, which 
appropriates $250,000 to defray the expense of 
" missions" — the financial clause, by the way, be- 
ing an ingenuous admission of the backward and 
unspontaneous nature of the political-union move- 
ment. Here is the most flagrant and dangerous 
violation of international courtesy, and yet we do 
not hear Mr. Smith's voice raised in eloquent pro- 
test ! A champion of honor who does not cham- 



l8 UNDER WHICH FLAG? 



pion honor certainly puts himself in a position to 
be speedily humiliated and discredited when he 
presumes to advise and direct intelligent people. 



The answer which Canada made to the first an- 
nexation resolution in the United States Senate was 
a clever counter-motion in the Parliament at Ottawa, 
introduced by John B. Mills, and designed merely 
to show absurdity in the American move. The 
motion was as follows : 

That it appears the advisability of a union between 
Canada and the United States is now being very gener- 
ally discussed throughout said Republic, and the commer- 
cial advantages of such a union are considered by some of 
the leading business men in the Republic to be of much 
importance. 

That it also seems as if the experiment of Republican 
government has ever proved a practical failure, and 
there are strong indications that the dissolution of the 
federation knovvn as the United States is imminent; and 
the spread of anarchy, or the building up of other foreign 
powers in the adjacent states, known as the New England 
States, might imperil British interests on this continent. 

That facts go to show that the said New England 
States, since severing their connection with the British 
Crown, have not made nearly as great progress, rela- 
tively, as the Provinces of Canada, and while their return 
to their old allegiance would not only materially advance 
the trade and promote the prosperity of the people living 
in those states, it would be of probable benefit to the 
neighboring provinces. 



THE GREAT qUESTION FOR CANADA. 1 9 

That it is a recognized fact that the population of these 
states includes many thousands of British-born people, 
who still owe allegiance to our sovereign lady, the 
Queen, though they have taken up their residence in 
those states. 

That it is also well-known that one of the leading and 
influential papers of Massachusetts, representing the most 
important interests of that Commonwealth, is urging a fed- 
eration with Canada upon the citizens of the United States. 
That the Parliament of Canada now assembled views 
this agitation with sympathy, and will do all in its 
power to aid in the annexation of such New England 
States, and that His Excellency the Governor General in 
Council be, and is hereby empowered to co - operate with 
Her Majesty s government in securing such an amend- 
ment to the Act of British North America as may be nec- 
essary to extend the boundaries of the Dominion of Can- 
ada ; such boundaries, however, not to be extended in a 
westerly direction beyond the Connecticut River, the 
Green Mountains and Lake Champlain 

That while the people of Canada represented by their 
Parliament are willing to welcome such of these New 
England States as wish to return to their old allegiance, 
they regard such a union as being more in the interests 
of said New England States than in that of Canada, and 
are unwilling that any force or undue influence should be 
used to bring about such a federation; nor would the 
people of Canada be willing to assume any burdens of 
debt of said New England States other than such as may 
be represented by the public works and buildings in such 
states as would be vested in the Crown, in case said 
states were admitted into the Dominion. 

• • • • 

It was asserted by a speaker at the big Montreal 



20 UNDER WHICH FLAG ? 

annexation meeting that Canadians are " more 
loyal to their grandmother across the sea than they 
are to their own mother here." He exaggerated 
the truth — on one side ! They are not inore loyal, 
but may be as loyal. And it will not be necessary 
to remind a well-balanced man or woman that 
reverence of one's honorable antecedents is a 
redeeming peculiarity of human nature, and that 
an acknowledgment of obligations is a mark of 
good breeding. 



ADEN, 
AFRICAN 
POSSESSIONS, 
AUSTRALIA, BA- 
HAMAS, BARBADOES, 
BERMUDAS, CANADA, 
CEYLON, CYPRESS, EGYPT 
(?) FALKLAND ISLANDS, FIGI 
ISLANDS, GREAT BRITAIN AND 
IRELAND, GUIANA, HONDURAS, 
HONG KONG, JAMAICA, MALTA, MAU- 
RITIUS, NEWFOUNDLAND, TASMANIA, 
TRINIDAD, AND MANY OTHER POSSESSIONS. 



Imperial Federation : Permanence 
Christianity : Progress, 



Imperial pedcpation. 

AAA 

IT would seem that the natural destiny of Canada, 
and of all the British dependencies, is in our 
present civilization to become more firmly cemented 
in a union with the mother land. True, as has been 
often said, colonies have generally in the world's 
history become independent, but this was not in 
obedience to^ but because of the violation of a law. 
Even so clear a thinker as the Canadian Liberal 
leader, Mr. Laurier, has been confused here. The 
injustices which made history in the past do not 
exist irremediably to-day, at least not under the 
British flag. Besides, the cable, the telegraph, 
and quick transportation now bind together and 
render wieldy what would have been disjointed 
and unmanageable a century or more ago. 

The great argument which has been made in the 
colonies, particularly in Canada, against imperial 
federation is that a dependency might be drawn 
into a war. which would not directly concern it. 
Canadians, for instance, might not wish to spend 
blood and money fighting for Australia, and the 
New Zealanders might object to giving military 
aid for the saving of India. But would not a 
union reduce the possibilities of war for the 
coTnponent parts to a minimum ? As they are 
now they are more or less liable to hostile attacks. 
23 



24 UNDER WHICH FLAG? 

Would not a consolidation of young and vigorous 
and growing countries — of Canada, of Australia, 
of India — the people marshalling under the meteor 
flag of Britain, serve to awe an aggressor? Would 
not the Gigantic Federation be able, under en- 
lightened and Christian statesmen, to command 
the world to cease its strife and be just to the race? 



Great as is the value of British citizenship now, 
it would be much enhanced under imperial federa- 
tion. And In this connection an article from a 
recent American newspaper Is reproduced show- 
ing, by way of contrast, and for the benefit of an- 
nexationists, the Inadequacy of the protection af- 
forded citizens of the Republic. The writer is 
himself somewhat familiar with the case, and can 
say tliat the editorial, which follows, is not at all 
overdrawn : 

A BLOT ON THE HARRISON SCUTCHEON. 

One stain, not generally apprehended, on the Harrison 
administration— and necessarily a great reproach to the 
American people — is the unavenged outrages perpetrated 
over two years ago by the Spanish soldiers on our 
missionaries in Ponape, one of the Caroline islands. 
Secretary Blaine, during his term of office, had all the 
facts indisputably set before him. He was shown how the 
several spiritual teachers of the natives were driven into 
exile in the island of Kusale by the brutal soldiery, who 
also sacked and burned the houses of the whites. He 



THE GREAT QUESTION FOR CANADA. 25 

admitted the indignities which our citizens have suffered, 
and forwarded, as was stated, an "ultimatum" to Madrid, 
demanding that the missionaries be reinstated and that an 
indemnity be paid. This was very good. 

That was over a year ago, and still the missionaries are 
on a lone island in the Pacific waiting, with rare Christian 
patience, for this government to redress their wrongs. 
Where is our "brilliant foreign policy " .? Where are the 
"proud privileges" and "immunities" which, we are 
taught, appertain to American citizenship ? 

President Harrison in his recent message dilated on the 
outcome of the Chilian episode, but in a half-dozen lines 
impotently lamented that the stain inflicted on our national 
life in a not less grave but more obscure instance had not 
been wiped out. Here is what he says : 

Our intercourse with Spain continues on a friendly footing. I regret, 
however, not to be able to report as yet the adjustment of the claims 
of the American missionaries arising from the disorders at Ponape, in 
the Caroline Islands, but I anticipate a satisfactory adjustment. 

Brilliant foreign policy, indeed ! We wonder how many 
days it would take " effete old England " in a similar case 
to get redress for her wronged subjects ? 

What say you, annexationists, to this.'* Will 
you desert, the flag which in any part of the world 
compels the recognition of your rights, not after 
years of sufferings but immediately your claim is 
brought to notice } 



Prof. G. R. Parkin at a recent lecture in Toronto, 
Canada, alluded to the maritime standing of 



26 UNDER WHICH FLAG ? 

the Dominion,* and pointed out that while she 
assumed no responsibility she depended entirely 
upon the mother country for protection. He 
further said : 

" Sir Charles Tupper told me I was doing wrong 
in suggesting this, but I replied that I would be 
ashamed of the name of Canadian if I were to 
claim the protection of the British flag in every 
part of the world and not be in favor of Canadians 
assuming their fair share of responsibility." 



* The shipping registered in Canada in 1S91 was 1,005,495 tons; in 
the United 813108,946,696; in tlic German Empire, 1,320,725; in France, 
3,116,077; in Great Britain, 7 978,538. 



First drink a liealth., tliis solemn ni61it, 

A health, to England, every ^uest ; 
That man's the best cosmopolite 

Who loves his native country best. 
May freedom's oak for ever live 

With stronger life from day to day ; 
That man's the best Conservative 

Who lops the mouldered branch away. 

— Tennyson. 



9$ 



The Immoi^ality of fiatufalization. 



IVTATIONALITY, as has been shown, being the 
^ ^ outcome of a process of nature, and patriot- 
ism being essential to the welfare of the state, any- 
thing which would impair or throw discredit on 
these characteristics of man must of necessity be 
against good morals and impolitic as well. 

The present naturalization procedure of the nations 
involves denationalization^ which is a dangerous 
and unjustifiable admission of the vulnerability of 
character. In this act it would seem that the individ- 
ual sacrifices a great moral principle to expediency. 

Now, the existence of this moral principle will 
be denied by many on the apparently suflficient 
ground that they cannot feel in the slightest degree 
any scruples of conscience over denationalization. 
They therefore conclude that, not feeling it, it does 
not exist. This might be conclusive if the experi- 
ence was universal, but such is not the case. A few 
— but a small percentage, perhaps — experience a 
revulsion of feeling at the contemplation of for- 
swearing their country. If this occurs in normal 
beings — and there is ample proof that it does — then 
it conclusively proves the existence of the principle. 

The sense of patriotism and love of country con- 
stitutes a virtue not to be tampered with or ad- 
29 



30 UNDER WHICH FLAG? 

versely legislated on, even indirectly. It would 
be right to permit the foreigner, under restrictions 
honorable to himself, to settle among the people of 
another nation and take part in the affairs of gov- 
ernment. It is the duty of the state to stimulate 
and conserve, not only from motives of morality but 
from motives of policy, every manly, independent 
and noble sentiment which may be peculiar to the 
individual, native or foreign -born. 

The state would claim that, even admitting the 
existence of the principle alluded to, naturalization 
is necessary in order to preserve the integrity and 
safety of the nation. The error of this position 
consists in the assumption that naturalization is the 
only way of securing the end of safety. 

The writer realizes that it is a condition and not 
a theory which confronts us ; that all people are 
not at present high-minded and noble ; that the 
foreigner, if given suffrage, may, unless he be 
obligated in some way to the contrary, work un- 
told injury to the land of his adoption. He also 
realizes that many high-souled men are to be found 
among the emigrant class. These latter are the 
ones who, under the present system of the so-called 
civilized nations, are sacrificed to the supposed 
exigencies of the situation. But it is probably 
true that he who conceives acutely of loyalty to 
one will not be recreant to the accepted trust re- 
posed in him by another. 



THE GREAT QUESTION FOR CANADA. 3 1 

As to the substitute for naturalization : Let the 
state enact a law which will require from every 
applicant for citizenship an oath promising no 
more than that he will uphold the laws, the con- 
stituted authority and institutions of the nation 
which is about to possess him. Let it not re- 
quire of him the unnatural proceeding of for- 
swearing his native country. Whenever there 
is doubt of the moral or intellectual fitness of the 
individual to assume the obligation, suffrage should 
be withheld : herein would be the true and only 
natural safeguard for the national life. Every 
regulation should be provided up to the limit of 
safety to the state, and no further ; beyond that it is 
an outrage on the individual. 

This system would doubtless prevent, particu- 
larly in the United States, many such as are now 
naturalized and voters from availing themselves of 
the franchise, but all admit that there is need of 
reform in this matter. On the other hand, the 
ballot could and would be availed of by a large 
number of honest, intelligent and trustworthy 
immigrants who could never otherwise use it. 
The state would be the gainer ; patriotism and 
individual development would be fostered ; but 
what is of primary importance, the government 
would attain the object of self-protection in a just 
and not in an unjust manner. 



To l^eeapitulate. 

Canadians will not become annexed to the United 
States — 

(i) Because they recognize the sacredness and 
the utility of nationality. 

(2) Because they have within themselves all 
the possibilities of healthy growth. 

(3) Because they hope to share in the glories 
of a natural British federation. 



